The repartee dragged with Sally to-day, almost to sullenness, and when she began to grow weary in the early afternoon, there was no reserve strength on which she could fall back.  She suddenly became aware that she wanted support, aid, comfort.  Finally she spilled a great armful of “empties” down on the long drain-board of the sink, turned to the wall, and buried her face in her hands.  The cook, Bert, though he cast a startled glance at her would not have dared to speak, after that encounter of the morning, but a rather explosive sniff was too eloquent an appeal to his manliness.

His left sleeve having fallen, he rolled it back, tied the strings of the apron tighter about his plump middle, and advanced to the battle.  His hand touched the shoulder of the girl.

“Sally!”

“Shut your face!” moaned a stifled voice.

But he took his courage between his teeth and persisted.

“Sally, somethin’ is wrong.”

“Nothin’ you can right, Fatty,” said the same woe-stricken voice.

“Sally, if somebody’s been gettin’ fresh with you—­”

Her arms jerked down; she whirled and faced him with clenched fists; her eyes shining more brightly for the mist which was in them.

“Fresh with me?  Why, you poor, one-horned yearling, d’you think there’s anybody in Eldara man enough to get fresh with me?”

Bert retreated a step; caution was a moving element in his nature.  From a vantage point behind a table, however, he ventured:  “Then what is wrong?”

Her woe, apparently, was greater than her wrath.

She said sadly:  “I dunno, Bert.  I ain’t the man I used to be—­I mean, the woman.”

He waited, his small eyes gentle.  What woman can altogether resist sympathy, even from a fat man and a cook?  Not even the redoubtable soul of a Sally.

She confessed:  “I feel sort of hollow and gone—­around the stomach, Fatty.”

“Eat,” suggested the cook.  “I just took out a pie that would—­”

“But it ain’t the stomach.  It’s like bein’ hungry and wantin’ no food.  Fatty, d’you think I’m sick?”

“You look kind of whitish.”

“Fatty, I feel—­”

She hesitated, as though too great a confession were at her lips, but she stumbled on:  “I feel as if I was afraid of somethin’, or someone.”

“That,” said Bert confidently, “ain’t possible.  It’s the stomach, Sally.  Something ain’t agreed with you.”

She turned from him with a vague gesture of despair.

“If this here feelin’ is goin’ to keep up—­why, I wisht I was dead—­I wisht I was dead!”

She went on to the swinging door, paused there to dab her eyes swiftly, started to whistle a tune, and in this fashion marched back to the eating-room.  Fatty, turning back to the stove, shook his head; he was more than ever convinced in his secret theory that all women are crazy.

Sally found that a new man had entered, one whom she could not remember having seen before.  She went to him at once, for it seemed to her that she would die, indeed, if she had to look much longer on the familiar, unshaven faces of the other men in the room.